8:31-59
Part 1, Section 1, Chapter 2, Article 2, SubSection 3, Heading 3 89 There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith. 50 Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 1, Article 1, Paragraph 7, SubSection 2 391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. 266 Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil". 267 The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing." 268 Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 1, Article 1, Paragraph 7, SubSection 2 392 Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels. 269 This "fall" consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: "You will be like God." 270 The devil "has sinned from the beginning"; he is "a liar and the father of lies". 271 Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 1, Article 1, Paragraph 7, SubSection 2 394 Scripture witnesses to the disastrous influence of the one Jesus calls "a murderer from the beginning", who would even try to divert Jesus from the mission received from his Father. 273 "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil." 274 In its consequences the gravest of these works was the mendacious seduction that led man to disobey God. Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 3, Paragraph 1, SubSection 4, Heading 1 473 But at the same time, this truly human knowledge of God's Son expressed the divine life of his person. 104 "The human nature of God's Son, not by itself but by its union with the Word, knew and showed forth in itself everything that pertains to God." 105 Such is first of all the case with the intimate and immediate knowledge that the Son of God made man has of his Father. 106 The Son in his human knowledge also showed the divine penetration he had into the secret thoughts of human hearts. 107 Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 3, Paragraph 3, SubSection 3, Heading 5 549 By freeing some individuals from the earthly evils of hunger, injustice, illness and death, 274 Jesus performed messianic signs. Nevertheless he did not come to abolish all evils here below, 275 but to free men from the gravest slavery, sin, which thwarts them in their vocation as God's sons and causes all forms of human bondage. 276 Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 4, Paragraph 1 574 From the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, certain Pharisees and partisans of Herod together with priests and scribes agreed together to destroy him. 317 Because of certain acts of his expelling demons, forgiving sins, healing on the sabbath day, his novel interpretation of the precepts of the Law regarding purity, and his familiarity with tax collectors and public sinners 318-some ill- intentioned persons suspected Jesus of demonic possession. 319 He is accused of blasphemy and false prophecy, religious crimes which the Law punished with death by stoning. 320 Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 4, Paragraph 1, SubSection 1 578 Jesus, Israel's Messiah and therefore the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, was to fulfil the Law by keeping it in its all embracing detail - according to his own words, down to "the least of these commandments". 330 He is in fact the only one who could keep it perfectly. 331 On their own admission the Jews were never able to observe the Law in its entirety without violating the least of its precepts. 332 This is why every year on the Day of Atonement the children of Israel ask God's forgiveness for their transgressions of the Law. The Law indeed makes up one inseparable whole, and St. James recalls, "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it." 333 Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 4, Paragraph 1, SubSection 3 588 Jesus scandalized the Pharisees by eating with tax collectors and sinners as familiarly as with themselves. 364 Against those among them "who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others", Jesus affirmed: "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." 365 He went further by proclaiming before the Pharisees that, since sin is universal, those who pretend not to need salvation are blind to themselves. 366 Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 4, Paragraph 1, SubSection 3 590 Only the divine identity of Jesus' person can justify so absolute a claim as "He who is not with me is against me"; and his saying that there was in him "something greater than Jonah,. . . greater than Solomon", something "greater than the Temple"; his reminder that David had called the Messiah his Lord, 371 and his affirmations, "Before Abraham was, I AM", and even "I and the Father are one." 372 Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 4, Paragraph 1, SubSection 3 592 Jesus did not abolish the Law of Sinai, but rather fulfilled it (cf. Mt 5:17-19) with such perfection (cf. Jn 8:46) that he revealed its ultimate meaning (cf.: Mt 5:33) and redeemed the transgressions against it (cf. Heb 9:15). Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 4, Paragraph 2, SubSection 2, Heading 2 601 The Scriptures had foretold this divine plan of salvation through the putting to death of "the righteous one, my Servant" as a mystery of universal redemption, that is, as the ransom that would free men from the slavery of sin. 397 Citing a confession of faith that he himself had "received", St. Paul professes that "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures." 398 In particular Jesus' redemptive death fulfils Isaiah's prophecy of the suffering Servant. 399 Indeed Jesus himself explained the meaning of his life and death in the light of God's suffering Servant. 400 After his Resurrection he gave this interpretation of the Scriptures to the disciples at Emmaus, and then to the apostles. 401 Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 4, Paragraph 2, SubSection 2, Heading 3 603 Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned. 405 But in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our name from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" 406 Having thus established him in solidarity with us sinners, God "did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all", so that we might be "reconciled to God by the death of his Son". 407 Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 4, Paragraph 2, SubSection 3, Heading 6 613 Christ's death is both the Paschal sacrifice that accomplishes the definitive redemption of men, through "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world", 439 and the sacrifice of the New Covenant, which restores man to communion with God by reconciling him to God through the "blood of the covenant, which was poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins". 440 Part 3, Section 1, Chapter 1, Article 3, SubSection 2 1741 Liberation and salvation. By his glorious Cross Christ has won salvation for all men. He redeemed them from the sin that held them in bondage. "For freedom Christ has set us free." 34 In him we have communion with the "truth that makes us free." 35 The Holy Spirit has been given to us and, as the Apostle teaches, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." 36 Already we glory in the "liberty of the children of God." 37 Part 3, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 8, SubSection 1 2466 In Jesus Christ, the whole of God's truth has been made manifest. "Full of grace and truth," he came as the "light of the world," he is the Truth. 257 "Whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness." 258 The disciple of Jesus continues in his word so as to know "the truth that will make you free" and that sanctifies. 259 To follow Jesus is to live in "the Spirit of truth," whom the Father sends in his name and who leads "into all the truth." 260 To his disciples Jesus teaches the unconditional love of truth: "Let what you say be simply 'Yes or No.'" 261 Part 3, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 8, SubSection 3 2482 "A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving." 281 The Lord denounces lying as the work of the devil: "You are of your father the devil, . . . there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies." 282 Part 4, Section 2, Article 3, SubSection 7 2852 "A murderer from the beginning, . . . a liar and the father of lies," Satan is "the deceiver of the whole world." 165 Through him sin and death entered the world and by his definitive defeat all creation will be "freed from the corruption of sin and death." 166 Now "we know that anyone born of God does not sin, but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and the whole world is in the power of the evil one." 167 The Lord who has taken away your sin and pardoned your faults also protects you and keeps you from the wiles of your adversary the devil, so that the enemy, who is accustomed to leading into sin, may not surprise you. One who entrusts himself to God does not dread the devil. "If God is for us, who is against us?" 168 Return